From the Book - First edition.
Slavery and revolution: truths not so self-evident
Slavery and the Constitution: freedom compromised
Stumbling forward: emancipation proceeds in New England and Pennsylvania
Forward to the past: the South's "Cavalier Kingdom"
The arithmetic of emancipation: from the purchase of Louisiana to the compromise over Missouri
The sunset of Northern slavery: freedom without equality
The wolf by the ear: slave resistance, White reaction, and the growing abolitionist movement
Freedom's faith: slavery sectionalizes the sacred
Slavery and manifest division: the Mexican cession, Free Soilers, and the Compromise of 1850
Rushing toward disunion: slavery and the factious 1850s
Presidential politics and the war for slavery: the Southern decision to secede
Thenceforward, and forever free: Abraham Lincoln's journey to emancipation
Slavery's death throes: emancipation during the Civil War
Union victory and the Thirteenth Amendment: free at last?